If you were invited to show your best work, what would you do?
That was a no-brainer for chef Chris Kajioka, who, along with chef Anthony Rush, is presenting a dinner Thursday at the renowned James Beard House in New York on behalf of their acclaimed Chinatown restaurant, Senia. Kajioka’s beloved dish in the showcase menu: charred cabbage from Hirabara Farms, covered with Parmesan, dill and moringa powder, and topped with a shio konbu marinated in dashi with minced ginger.
“The cabbages are growing really well,” he said a couple of weeks ago while discussing their game plan for the event. “Auntie Pam (Hirabara) is timing the harvest so perfectly.”
That’s not easy when you’re dealing with 40 pounds of cabbage to feed 60 people, said Kajioka, explaining that such a dinner involves the commitment of growers as well as the chefs. “Suppliers for sure must provide the very best.”
These aren’t everyday cabbages. They’re conical Caraflex cabbage, “completely sweet” because they contain no sulfur and therefore have no odor, Kajioka said.
“We cook them slowly with butter and salt, then char them on the flat top until they completely blacken. They look burnt but it’s just sugar, and a lot of people are shocked by it. There’s a meatiness that makes them more than a vegetable dish. That’s one ingredient we’re taking that’s very, very special. At the restaurant, every table orders that dish. I’m very proud of that ingredient.”
It’s a dish that helped put Senia on the map. In fact, the restaurant immediately garnered a James Beard Award nomination and international praise when its doors opened in December. Last week it was announced that the chefs plan to open a new restaurant, Ondine, next fall on Maui at the Hotel Wailea. Thursday’s Beard House dinner is meant to launch their new venture.
The menu, however, isn’t a preview of Ondine’s. Rather, it will reflect the chefs’ style, established at Senia and to continue at Ondine. The differences lie in the restaurants’ concepts, Kajioka said.
“Senia’s more of a neighborhood restaurant, with lots of small plates for sharing. The Wailea clientele is different. There will be more couples, so a prix fixe menu makes more sense there than small plates.”
What all this means for the Beard House dinner is that the food will reflect the isles’ bounty, whether it’s Hirabara cabbage, moringa from a Waianae farm, Maui venison or local fish.
The Senia team will turn the venison into tartare on brioche, the fish into a poke cracker pupu. Their dessert will be lemon icebox cake, a tribute to pastry chef Heather Ho, a local girl who worked at New York’s World Trade Center and died on 9/11. In total, they will serve five courses and four canapes.
“It’s going to be all Hawaii. We’re going to bring everything with us,” said Kajioka. “But it’s a double-edged sword. We want to process everything as fresh as possible, and we could get venison in New York, for example — but that defeats the purpose.”
To maintain freshness over the long trek, the team will pack ingredients in 8-foot coolers and large boxes. Kajioka said that when the group went to New York in March to cook a dinner at Per Se, charges for the oversize, overweight containers totaled about $2,000.
Regardless of the challenges, however, he calls the invitation to cook at Beard House “a huge, huge, huge honor.”
“Hawaii is a hot name in food right now,” he said. “There are so many new restaurants opening here, and the food is good. It’s a good time for Hawaii.”
